Marcello Dell'Utri

Marcello Dell'Utri (11 September 1941-) was an Italian Forza Italia politician and a senior advisor to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Dell'Utri had served as CEO of Berlusconi's company Publitalia '80 before entering politics, and, in 2014, he was arrested after being found guilty of tax fraud, false accounting, and complicity in conspiracy with the Sicilian Mafia.

Biography
Marcello Dell'Utri was born in Palermo, Sicily in 1941, and he studied law in Milan. He began to work for Silvio Berlusconi in 1973, and he rose to become CEO of Publitalia '80, one of Berlusconi's companies. In 1994, he was one of the founders of Forza Italia, together with Berlusconi and Cesare Previti. Dell'Utri had ties to the Sicilian Mafia, and he paid the Mafia 200 million lire annually through Fininvest, as the Mafia supported Forza Italia in exchange for favors. Dell'Utri served in the Chamber of Deputies from 1996 to 2001 and in the Senate from 2001 to 2013, but he was found guilty of tax fraud, false accounting, and complicity in conspiracy with the Mafia. On 9 May 2014, he was sentenced to seven years in prison, and he was extradited from Lebanon to Italy to serve his sentence.